Video Killed the Comic-Book Star

A while back, I mentioned that if WB’s The Flash didn’t use its latest “Flashpoint” adaptation to reboot the show I’d be done with it.

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…Well, there was no reboot. If anything they used the story as an excuse to double down on the time-travel nonsense and amp up the soap-opera silliness. So I was done.

I did check in on Supergirl to see how they handled Superman, and while they did okay with this aspect, the rest of the show remained figurative junk food (like the rest of the CW shows), offering nothing to nourish the heart or mind.

I then checked in on Legends of Tomorrow strictly for the JSA appearance, which wound up feeling like a bad joke. No Doc Fate, no Green Lantern… but they did have a version of Vixen on the team. And Obsidian. It was a head scratcher.

Over on ABC, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been okay, although I find the incorporation of magic into the show a poor fit. I should have been thrilled to see Ghost Rider (a childhood fave) on the small screen, but this was some new, car-driving version of the character, which largely negated the nostalgia factor for me.

Meanwhile, I finally caught up with season 2 of Daredevil on Netflix and found it a mixed bag. They didn’t go the full Man Without Fear route (which rendered Elektra as some kind of evil character from her very beginning), but they didn’t go the classic Miller route either (which featured a near-perfect character arc wherein Elektra started out 100% pure and innocent before she was corrupted by her own rage and hatred). So it wasn’t as bad as it might have been, but still, if Elektra starts out as anything less than an innocent her arc (and its tragedy) is fatally compromised.

So here’s the thing: The CW shows generally have the look down. The characters look like the heroes I grew up reading. But the stories are pretty terrible.

Then there’s Marvel. Outside of Daredevil (and even with him it took almost all of season one to get there), the Marvel heroes don’t look like the heroes I grew up on, but the stories are much better, with less soap opera cliches.

So the verdict for now is this: I’ll probably keep up with the Marvel shows on Netflix but let the DC/CW ones go. (It helps that I can binge on the Netflix shows and be done with them in a weekend.) Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is really on the bubble; I might not get back to that one either when it returns in 2017. It might depend on what else is on in that timeslot.

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